Body Parts (Rye & Claire 1) (17 page)

After another half hour of hopping over fallen trees and branches, she spotted what she was looking for.

Walking now, she began to
circle around behind the block building until she was directly behind
it. She duck walked out of the woods up to a large boulder just twenty
feet from the rear door, and peaked around the edge. “What the hell?”

Rocking back off her heels
onto her butt, her back against the moss-covered boulder, she tried to
figure out what she had just seen. The only door looked solid, the top
was chicken wire and the bottom half was reinforced with metal. The door
handle was a simple pull, no doorknob.

This could be the door to any clinic in the country, Claire thought. “What kind of house is this?” she said softly.

There were no windows facing
the boulder except the one in the door. Taking a deep breath, Claire
sprinted to the back of the house, pressing herself against the wall of
the building next to the door. Her blood raced as the adrenalin surged.
Taking another deep breath and holding it, she peeked in through the
bottom corner of the window. She looked down at what could have been a
hospital corridor, complete with crash cart and two gurneys sitting in
the hall. Not seeing anyone, she took a minute to scope out the hall,
but couldn’t see much beyond the first room.

“OK, Claire, you can do this.”

She took several deep breaths
through her nose to help calm down, the way she did before a sparing
match at the dojo. Gently, very gently, she reached up and tugged at the
door handle. To her surprise, the heavy door opened easily. In one
quick move she slipped into the hall and stepped into the first room she
came to.

She did a quick scan, checking out what appeared to be an exam room. “Holy shit!” she cried out louder than she meant to.

There, sitting on an exam
table, dressed in loose fitting scrubs, was the blonde from the porn
tape. Claire checked the hall, still empty. She closed the door and
turned out the light.

“Hi, hello?” Claire whispered.

She immediately recognized
that the young woman was mildly sedated. She sat on the exam table
tottering, as though about to fall forward, eyes glazed. In twenty years
as an emergency room nurse and EMT, Claire had seen people in this
state of sedation hundreds of times; usually she had put them there.

She climbed onto the exam table next to the young woman, placing a hand on her shoulder to keep her from falling.

“My name’s Claire. Crystal?”

She leaned forward putting her ear in front of the woman’s lips.

“Mu eve.”

“Mary, is that your name? I thought it was Crystal.”

The young woman’s brow furrowed and she pursed her lips to speak.

“Hep!”

Each time the young woman spoke she rocked forward against Claire’s steadying hand.

“Helen? Is that your name? Can I help you, Helen?”

Suddenly the young woman turned to face Claire, her eyes focused, her speech clearing a bit.

“Must leave now.”

As though someone had flipped a switch, the young woman slumped forward, her eyes once again glazed over.

“That’s all I needed to hear. C’mon honey, let’s get out of here.”

She placed a hand on the
woman’s chest and in the small of her back to help her slide off the
exam table. Crystal wasn’t steady, but was willing. Claire led her to
the door and checked the hall.

“Get ready. On the count of three we’re going to run out the door.”

She knew that providing a
mildly sedated patient advance notice allowed them time to adjust. On
three, the two women stepped into the hall. She figured Crystal was
stable enough that she could be pulled along. Claire was just at the
back door when she stopped short at the slamming of a door at the
opposite end of the building.

“Hey their Crystal, who’s your friend?”

Claire turned. She was face to face with a burly young man in scrubs.

“Hi there, I’m Derrick, her anesthesiologist. And you are…?” he said slowly.

Claire knew that it was now or never. If she hesitated, all would be over.

“I’m Doctor Pain,” she said,
smiling, as she planted her right foot into Derrick’s groin. She then
grasped his throat with her left hand. As he doubled over, she helped
him to the floor, placing a thumb behind his ear causing him to lose
conscious.

Claire grabbed Crystal by the shoulders and shook her hard. “C’mon we’ve gotta go.”

Pushing and pulling, Claire
got the two of them out the door. She headed into the forest, holding
Crystal tightly by the hand, coaxing, dragging and pulling her through
the woods. Branches slapped them, feeling like so many needles, poking
and whipping.

“C’mon, snap out of it,”
Claire hissed, as she dragged her along. They had to get back to the
road and her car as soon as possible. “At this rate we won’t make the
road before they notice you’re gone. C’mon, Crystal, you can make it.”

Scanning the woods ahead,
Claire noticed a hill and some cliffs. Not exactly the direction of the
road, but a place where they could hide until Crystal came around.

“Hey how about a rest, would
you like that?” Crystal was becoming more responsive, crying out as
branches struck her in the face. But she didn’t respond to Claire’s
question.

Claire made her way around
branches and tree limbs scattered on the forest floor. In some cases,
whole trees lay in their path. Working her way to the cliffs, she
noticed that Crystal was looking around, becoming aware of her
surroundings.

There had to be some rocks, a
place to hide. When she finally reached the cliffs, there were no
boulders to hide behind, just a shear rock face.

Claire suddenly noticed that
Crystal was no longer yanking her arm every thirty seconds. She was now
moving with much more ease. Claire stopped, attempted to get a verbal
response, but still nothing.

As they rounded the natural curve of the cliff face, a hole appeared. “Look, a cave,” Claire said.

Cautiously, she crept up to
the small dark opening. Her breathing instantly constricted and she
quickly stepped back, spooked by the black hole in solid stone that
suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The opening seemed to shrink right
before her eyes and she was reminded of something far back in her
memory, something out of her childhood. Taking a deep breath, she
stepped up to the opening. One look and she knew this was no cave, it
was a mine.

Even in the dim light, she
could see that the timbers were huge and ran up the side, crisscrossing
along the ceiling. But as she stepped to enter, Crystal would have none
of it, and froze.

“C’mon there’s no time for this. Crystal, come on,” Claire said, in her sternest whisper.

Slowly, she managed to drag
the young woman into the mine’s entrance. She had her back bent to the
task and was facing into the shaft, pulling with all her strength.

“Where are we?” Claire whirled around. Crystal had spoken.

“Welcome back to the land of the living. My name’s Claire. C’mon, we’ve got to hide.”

She led her to the wall of the mine, and the two women crouched behind one of the huge beams. “What do you remember?”

“Only that I was going to be
taken to a clinic to see my friend, Jan. When I got inside the room
where Jan was supposed to be someone came up behind me and placed a
cloth over my mouth and nose. The next thing I knew there were trees and
someone pulling me along. Was that you?”

“Yeah, we’ve been bushwhacking for about fifteen minutes.”

“Who are you and why are you helping me?”

“My husband and I operate an
ambulance service and were attending an accident just outside of Medford
on the I-5. He said you came up to him and asked for help, then he saw
you on a porn tape and thought you might be in trouble. But when we
discovered that a dead guy was also in a film made by the same company,
we were afraid you might be next.”

“What do you think they were going to do to me?” Crystal asked.

“I wasn’t sure until I found
you in that exam room. Look.” Claire reached over and lifted the bottom
of Crystal’s loosely hanging shirt. “Can you see this?”

She craned her neck looking over at her right side. “Black lines, and it looks like a circle.”

“Those are the lines placed
on a patient so that the surgeon knows where to cut. It looks like
someone was going to remove something—most likely your liver.”

Crystal rocked off her heels and sat down hard on her butt. “Oh my God…Jan.”

Claire placed a hand on her shoulder. “Crystal?” Claire whispered.

Crystal had a distant look in
her eyes and wouldn’t respond to her name. Tears were running down her
cheeks and her chest was heaving, as if she were out of breath. She
gasped for air. Hyperventilation, Claire thought. Quickly unbuckling her
butt pack, she fished around until she found a tiny paper bag.

“Breath into the bag,” Claire
said, placing Crystal’s hands around the opening, directing it to her
mouth and helping her hold it in place. Crystal wasn’t listening.

Grabbing her shoulders,
Claire shook her hard. “I think we should find a place to hide back in
the mine, wait until dark, then make our way to the road and my car.”

Crystal swiped at her nose with her wrist, looked Claire square in the eyes. “I’m OK, but can we stay here a little longer?”

“Sure, would you like to tell me about Jan? You’ve mentioned her twice.”

“Jan and I grew up in
Garland, Iowa, and moved to Los Angeles together to break into acting.
When the money began running out Jan answered an ad looking for women to
act in adult films. I haven’t heard from her in days.”

She suddenly lurched forward
and wrapped her arms around Claire, hugging her tightly. “Thank you so
much,” Crystal said, rocking back onto her heels. “How did you find me?”

Claire was fiddling with her butt pack as she spoke. “I traced the license of the Dodge van to the mansion.”

Tears began running down Crystal’s cheeks. Claire reached across in the semi dark and using her thumbs wiped away the tears.

“When they wouldn’t let me in
through the front gate I parked my car down the road, hopped a barbed
wire fence and cut around through the woods, thinking I would come
around behind the house. I stumbled onto the clinic by accident.

“That’s where you found me?”

“Do you remember me sitting next to you on the exam table?”

“No, after I was sedated I
only remember being pulled along and tripping a lot.” She began rocking
back and forth. “The thought that you might not have found the clinic,
and me…”

“I know, I know,” Claire
said, trying to comfort her. “But we’ve got to get moving. I know I’ve
got a penlight in here somewhere.” Claire continued to fish around in
her butt pack.

“I’m ready,” Crystal said. “I don’t suppose you have a stick of gum in there.”

The two women stood and
peaked around the thick wooden beam that hid them from view. They crept
along one side of the mine; Claire kept her penlight at the ready. Each
time they looked back, the entrance appeared smaller. Finally, as the
shaft made a slight bend, the entrance of the mine was lost from view,
and Claire had to turn on her penlight. They hadn’t gone thirty steps
beyond the bend in the shaft when the only light they had was from the
little flashlight.

“Hang onto my belt and stay
an arm’s length behind me, we really have to watch our step,” Claire
said. “I’ve heard mines always have vertical shafts.”

Crystal smiled into the darkness. “I think I’ve seen the same movie.”

Progress was slow, both women
moving cautiously and the penlight was dimming to a pale yellow. Claire
stopped and once again unclipped her butt pack.

“Here.” She handed the tiny
light to Crystal. “I want to save the batteries. I think I’ve got a
couple candles and a lighter.” Minutes later, with the little pack back
around Claire’s waist and each of them holding a candle, they continued.

As they moved farther down the shaft, it began to change.

“What happened to the beams, and doesn’t the tunnel seem to be getting smaller?” Crystal said.

Claire was fingering round holes in the rock. “I don’t know but I think these must be where they placed the dynamite.”

Crystal stepped around Claire and went a little deeper into the tunnel. “Come look at this.” she said.

Holding her candle out in
front and cupping her hand around it to protect the flame, Claire made
her way up next to Crystal and saw immediately that the tunnel split
about fifty feet ahead. Crystal held her candle up so that she could see
Claire’s face. “Which way?”

“I don’t know. Let’s try the right first, I guess.”

The closer they got to the
fork in the tunnel the more their candles flickered. As they stood at
the split, they detected a slight breeze and had to protect the
tentative candle flames with their hands.

“I think the decision has been made for us,” Claire said, nodding towards the right.

As the candles burned down
into the wax, the flames produced less and less light. Soon the women
were walking side by side holding the candles next to each other, in an
attempt to get as much light out of them as they could. Claire kept one
shoulder on the wall as she walked, to provide a guide as the candles
gave out just enough light to show where they were stepping.

“Stop for a minute and take
the candles, I’m going to get the penlight out while I still have enough
light to see what I’m doing.”

“Tell me again why we’re in here,” Crystal said.

“Looking for a place to hide until nightfall,” Claire said, stuffing the penlight into her hip pocket.

“What time is it? Seems like we’ve been walking for at least an hour.”

Claire pressed the button on her watch illuminating the face. “Not a chance. Only about thirty minutes.”

When they started walking
again, Crystal took the lead crouching to hold the candles low so they
could see their feet, and dragging her shoulder on the tunnel wall.
Claire hovered at her shoulder, staring at the ever-shrinking halo
around their feet. Then, with a gasp, the light was gone.